Industry Leader Announces New Product Functionality to Help Companies Plug into Social Networks to Achieve Greater Social Commerce Results
AUSTIN, Texas – Bazaarvoice, the market and technology leader in hosted social commerce applications that drive sales, unveiled new Social Network Accelerators to help its clients effectively leverage social networks in their social commerce strategies. Bazaarvoice, which pioneered the social commerce market, launched ShoutIt! in 2007 to help marketers amplify the voices of their most influential customers on social networks. The company continues to lead the industry in defining new ways to maximize measurable ROI from social initiatives.
With the new Social Network Accelerators, Bazaarvoice ensures that companies achieve more from social commerce by using social networks like Facebook and Twitter as a distribution channel for user-generated content created on brand sites. The new capabilities also help companies strategically plug into social networks to drive participation and gain valuable customer data that can be used to optimize the user experience on eCommerce and brand sites.
“Twitter is posting 1,928% year-over-year growth. Facebook has more than 87 million unique monthly visitors and is the fourth most visited website in the world. Clearly there is a tremendous marketing opportunity in these numbers, but most efforts to date have fallen flat,” said Brett Hurt, founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice. “Our new Social Network Accelerators give brands a blueprint for plugging into social networks in the right way to drive sales. It all starts with engaging users through social commerce applications such as Ratings & Reviews, Ask & Answer, and Stories – and gives brands an integrated strategy to tap into social networks for better distribution, participation, and profile information.”
“Bazaarvoice has been a consistently forward-thinking partner in terms of social media,” said Dmitri Siegel, Managing Director of Urban Outfitters. “We’re very excited to continue to work together to engage our community through social networks and get measurable results from our social commerce implementation. We are very happy to have Bazaarvoice as a key strategic partner in our integrated social strategy.”
Like all Bazaarvoice offerings, the Social Network Accelerators are designed to meet the needs of large brands with the industry’s best technology, client services, community moderation, analytics, and partner integrations.
New Capabilities:
Distribution: Bazaarvoice integrates with Facebook Connect to distribute user-generated content and engage customers. For example, customers are able to automatically publish Reviews, Answers, and Stories directly to Facebook in order to amplify their voices and share their opinions with their network of friends. The new feature also gives retailers the flexibility to determine how and when content is displayed on the social network.
Profiles: Bazaarvoice brings a user’s network of friends into the shopping experience by prominently displaying opinions of friends who also shop on the site. This integration of a user’s social network helps to accelerate purchases and drives further site engagement.
Participation: Bazaarvoice taps users directly in the social networks where they’re already engaged with the brand to discuss that brand’s products, brand, and to share their knowledge. Ultimately these contributions are funneled back to the brand’s site where it can further impact social commerce objectives.
In conjunction with the announcement of its new Social Network Accelerators, Bazaarvoice is coupling new best practices through Community Managers who are dedicated to helping clients gather more user-generated content to further sales and recommend how to do it in a measurable way. Additionally, through its Radius partner program, Bazaarvoice integrates with a broad ecosystem of more than 30 partners in order to help its clients accelerate social commerce adoption and maximize measurable ROI.
“We’re hearing directly from clients that the social networks are important, but it’s been difficult to extract any value historically,” said Sam Decker, CMO of Bazaarvoice. “Advertisers are rushing in with the same broadcast medium strategy, and it fails to work in these intimate environments. We’re connecting the reach and visibility of social networks with the relevance and structure of our Social Commerce platform. This will help our clients turn this complex new medium into measurable results.”
About Bazaarvoice
Bazaarvoice’s Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions have served more than 60 billion pieces of customer-generated content on more than 575 brand web sites like Best Buy, Costco, Dell, Macy’s, Overstock, P&G, Panasonic, QVC, and USAA in 36 countries. The company connects organizations to their influencers through a unique network that reaches hundreds of millions of consumers around the globe, enabling authentic customer-powered marketing. Through syndication, analytics, partnerships, and consulting, Bazaarvoice brings the voice of the customer to the center of their clients’ business strategy, proving “social” can drive measured revenue growth and cost savings for manufacturing, retail, travel, and financial services companies. Headquartered in Austin, the company has offices in London, Paris, and Singapore. For more information and access to client success stories, visit www.bazaarvoice.com, read the blog at www.bazaarblog.com, and follow on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bazaarvoice.
